Surescripts Sentinel™ Takes E-Prescribing to a Whole New Level

By Mike Lessard, Director, Product Innovation, Surescripts

With the shift toward value-based care and the fact that three-fourths of the nation’s prescriptions are now electronic, data accuracy is more important than ever. And given that 1.5 billion electronic prescriptions cross the Surescripts network each year, we must ensure the information is correct and workflows are efficient so patient care and safety can be optimized.

Improving patient outcomes isn’t possible without high quality data, and high quality data can’t be achieved without connectivity, feedback and collaboration. That’s why we recently introduced Surescripts Sentinel™—a proprietary, automated system that measures the accuracy of electronic prescriptions.

Before creating Sentinel, Surescripts convened hundreds of e-prescribing stakeholders, including prescribers, pharmacists, technology partners, drug compendia and industry associations to discuss what was working, what wasn’t, and how technology could help improve efficiency and patient safety.

The stakeholders identified and validated eleven major pain points that impact prescription data quality. Some of the pain points include making sure that prescriber intent and patient directions are clear, and ensuring standard drug descriptions match drug identifiers and qualifiers. Without the automated Sentinel system, addressing these critical pain points would be difficult, costly and time-consuming.

Surescripts Sentinel now monitors the billions of electronic prescriptions sent across our network annually. It tracks, measures and interprets various quality metrics, and then delivers actionable intelligence to users so they can identify and fix prescription errors and workflow issues. It also analyzes prescribing trends in near real time, so providers and pharmacists can address potential patterns of concern or opportunities for improvement. Ultimately, Sentinel is empowering Surescripts and our network users to improve patient safety, bolster efficiency and ensure quality. Care decisions and patient lives depend on it.

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